Cold Wrath Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by Peter Turnbull from Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Recent Titles by Peter Turnbull from Severn House

  The Hennessey and Yellich Series

  ONCE A BIKER

  NO STONE UNTURNED

  TURNING POINT

  INFORMED CONSENT

  DELIVER US FROM EVIL

  AFTERMATH

  THE ALTERED CASE

  GIFT WRAPPED

  A DREADFUL PAST

  COLD WRATH

  The Harry Vicary Series

  IMPROVING THE SILENCE

  DEEP COVER

  THE GARDEN PARTY

  DENIAL OF MURDER

  IN VINO VERITAS

  The Maurice Mundy Series

  A COLD CASE

  COLD WRATH

  Peter Turnbull

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain 2018 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.

  First published in the USA 2019 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS of

  110 East 59th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022

  This eBook edition first published in 2018 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2019 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  Copyright © 2018 by Peter Turnbull.

  The right of Peter Turnbull to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8857-0 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-981-8 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0193-5 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  It came to pass that in the land of Elizabeth, our Queen, in the city of York, which in the time of Augustus Caesar was called Eboracum, there dwelt a certain man who was named Anthony Garrett and who was within his own dwelling slain.

  ONE

  Wednesday 21 June, dawn – 11.30 hours

  In which a man sees a human corpse for the last time, three women are seen to act in a most curious manner, and in which the gentle reader is introduced to Chief Inspector George Hennessey.

  The day on which Miles Law came across a human corpse for the last time was also, by coincidence, the first day of the long-forecast heatwave which was created by a high-pressure weather system and which had tracked in a north-easterly direction from the Azores to enfold the British Isles. It was also, by further coincidence, the longest day of the year, being the 21st of June, the summer solstice. Miles Law had chosen for his bedroom a room with a south-east-facing window and had thus, that morning, as on all mornings, awoken with the sunrise, sleeping, as was his wont, with open curtains. Less than one half-hour later, having flung the light summer duvet off his naked body so as to try and obtain some release from the heat, he had attempted to return to sleep. Then, with no little annoyance, having found that nakedness brought him neither sleep nor tranquil rest, he observed the wisdom of the ancient adage ‘do not fight the battle which you know you can’t win’, and had in consequence thusly risen and had showered and had shaved. Once dressed in white slacks and an old, baggy and much faded blue T-shirt, he had crept light-footedly down the narrow-angled staircase of the small cottage he rented and into the cramped narrow lounge and then he progressed to the equally cramped kitchen which was situated beyond the lounge. He had a light breakfast of cereal and three mugs of black sweetened coffee, taken in the lounge while listening with appreciation to the gently reassuring and effortlessly cultured sound of BBC Radio 4’s morning programmes, Today, Yesterday in Parliament, and the first few minutes of Desert Island Discs. He remained in the lounge sipping coffee as the time crept slowly, all too slowly he felt, until just after nine a.m., upon which he switched off the radio and then left his cottage, which was set back from the road beside a stand of laurel bushes, and he collected his bike from the lean-to shelter which stood at the rear of the building. He wheeled the bicycle down the deeply rutted pathway of unsurfaced, baked-hard soil which led to the roadway, whereupon he mounted the bicycle and began to cycle steadily and quite contentedly towards the nearby village of Millington. At that moment the sun was rising behind him and so, as he rode, he was able to enjoy the view of the flat, rich landscape that was the Vale of York without having to half close his eyes and squint against the glare of the sun. He cycled in a relaxed and a calm manner along the pasty grey-coloured lane, which was, he had once learned, an ancient roadway, probably dating to pre-Roman times, and he rode his bike between fields which were thick with ripening wheat, as indeed he had done many times before. He enjoyed the birdsong about him as he rode. His eye was suddenly caught by a red kite that was circling in a gliding manner seeking prey, and doing so against the blue and near cloudless sky. Miles Law watched with interest as the raptor suddenly folded its wings and dived, with evident purpose and determination, into the wheat field to his right, and then, moments later, rapidly rose to a height of about fifty feet, Law judged, and flew away.

  Miles Law entered the village of Millington and as he did so he noticed a small amount of normal morning activity: the postman on his walk impudently reading with clear and evident curiosity the message on the back of the postcard that he was about to deliver; the lithe figure of the milkman in his blue smock attending to his bottle-clinking round; the middle-aged women walking side by side but not talking, carrying, at that time, empty shopping bags. Shortly after crossing the parish boundary into the village Miles Law dismounted from his bike and bent forward to remove the cycle clips from his trouser bottoms. He then began to push his bike up the long, narrow gravel-covered driveway which was the pedestrian and vehicular approach to an isolated Victorian-era house which, by the weathered name carved into the stone gateposts, which stood either side of the foot of the drive, was called ‘The Grange’.

  Miles Law pondered The Grange as he commenced what would be his slow walk up the drive, his feet crunching the gravel as he did so. The house did, that particular morning he thought, present quite a colourful spectacle, catching the rising sun and glowing most becomingly as it did so. The house that day in fact seemed to Miles Law to possess a particularly warm and most welcoming appearance.

  The Grange stood, the dear reader might picture in their mind’s eye, four square and solid upon a slight eminence, which Miles Law had learned some years earlier had been created by a glacier in the last ice age bulldozing the soil before it, as it progressed in a
southerly direction, whereupon it had halted and over the vastness of geological time had eventually retreated as the global temperature had warmed and the ice had thawed. Or more succinctly, as Law has been told, ‘it was as far south as the ice got’, there being many hundreds of similar mounds stretching across the United Kingdom and Ireland and which roughly corresponded to the 54th degree of latitude.

  The driveway of The Grange was of recently laid dull yellow gravel and rose in a slight incline from the road to the house over a length, Miles Law estimated, of perhaps two hundred feet, before it widened out to form a large area in front of the house itself to offer car turning, or car-parking space. To the left of the driveway as one approached the house was a dense shrubbery which, at that time of year, was in full foliage of mainly green shades but was also speckled here and there with splashes of yellow and red and blue. To the right of the driveway as one approached the house was a large area of lawn which had evidently been mown so that strips of dark-green grass alternated neatly with strips of light-green grass of equal width. The building itself was of stone with large sash windows on the elevated ground floor, one at either side of the door, with similar sized windows above the ground floor and with a third window above the door. A generously sized skylight in the roof gave clear indication that the attic space had some function other than storage, although specifically what that function was Miles Law did not know, he having not once set foot in any part of the house, his place being in the garden, and there he was kept. Even his interview for his job had taken place outside the house, with he and his prospective employer agreeing on terms, and job description and remuneration, standing talking to each other at the foot of the front steps.

  The Grange had been repainted within the last few weeks and Miles Law thought that the paint still looked fresh. The walls were, to Miles Law, a subtle and most pleasant pastel shade of blue, while the stonework surrounding the window frames had been picked out in gloss white which, at that moment, powerfully reflected the sunlight, while the blue caused the becoming glow. The door was painted gloss black and the large and heavy-looking handle and door knocker were both of highly polished brass. The roof was of red tiles and was, so far as Miles Law could tell, flawless, as if having been recently re-roofed, the owner of the house clearly subscribing to the belief that ‘if you want to look after your house, then look after the roof because if you lose the roof, you lose the house’. At ground level airbricks betrayed the presence of a cellar which Miles Law knew to be something of a rarity, even a rare luxury in the Vale of York with its notoriously high water table. Law’s modest cottage, situated as it was on the flood plain of a small river, could, by contrast, boast and offer only a shallow crawl space beneath the floorboards of the ground floor.

  Miles Law, who had been a fit and a strong man when he was in his youth, now hesitated at the foot of the driveway of The Grange and ‘pumped up’ his body before pushing his bike up the driveway to the house. He began the ascent, making no attempt to soften his footfall, but actually twisting his feet so as to encourage the sound of his shoes crunching the gravel to carry over the ground towards the front aspect of the house. He knew his employer to be a man who did not seek friendship, a man who was not frightened of being disliked, and Law especially knew him to be a man who did not like being taken by surprise and so, as Law pushed his bike towards the house, he crunched and crunched and crunched.

  Upon reaching the well-scrubbed stone steps at the front of the house he rested his bicycle against the side of the house and then climbed the steps up to the front door, and then he rapped out what was ‘his’ agreed knock on the large brass door knocker, being one knock then a slow count to ten then two more knocks, in rapid succession, which echoed loudly inside the house. The head gardener, Miles Law had been told, also had his designated knock and the contract house cleaners had, he had found out, their specific knock. It was just the way the householder wanted it. The house owner paid the gardener’s wages and he paid the cleaners’ fee and so he got what he wanted. It was by the means of designated knocks that the householder knew who had arrived at his house and when they had arrived.

  Miles Law, having announced his arrival, then turned and looked out across the front garden and back down the driveway towards the road. All seemed still. The postman and the milkman having progressed on their ‘walk’ and ‘round’ respectively had disappeared from sight, and the two middle-aged ladies had clearly reached the shops because they too had vanished from sight. Miles Law’s eyes then rested upon the bungalow which stood directly opposite The Grange and which was also raised up a little from the level of the road, although it was of a slightly lower elevation than The Grange. He recalled when that particular plot of land had been occupied by a derelict barn which had subsequently been demolished. Shortly afterwards, about five years earlier, he thought, the bungalow had been built using the local grey stone. The garden of the bungalow with its two-car garage on the right-hand side as one faced the property had been laid out by a firm of landscape architects and the occupants, an elderly married couple, had then taken up residence. The couple had always seemed to Law to be well content. He had noticed the couple only in passing over the recent years and then he realized that he seemed to be noticing only the elderly lady occupant, quite thin looking, he always thought, even frail, but she was clearly a ‘garden gate’ of a human being, one that keeps creaking but never falls from its hinges and continues to do the job which nature intended it to do.

  Miles Law descended the front steps of The Grange and walked, again deliberately crunching the gravel as he did so, to his left and then left again down the side of the house towards the rear of the property to where the outbuildings stood, hidden from the view of anyone on the road whether car driver or pedestrian. At the rear of The Grange were the greenhouses, the potting shed and also the shed where the gardening tools were kept. As he reached the rear corner of the building, Miles Law glanced to his left, ran his eyes along the back wall and instantly noticed, and with no little surprise, that one of the ground-floor windows was open – wide open, fully elevated so that the lower pane was almost parallel with the upper pane.

  ‘Now that,’ Miles Law spoke softly to himself, ‘is very unusual. It is not like Garrett at all. Not like him at all.’

  It was, in fact, most unusual indeed.

  ‘And see here, once again he comes,’ the woman spoke to herself, ‘and always with that “shifty” something about him. So short and thin but he seems to be strong, he seems to be deliberately grinding the gravel beneath his shoes as he walks up the driveway, so much so that I fancy that if I were outside my front door I could hear him at this distance.’ The woman watched Miles Law arrive at The Grange and once again thought ‘shifty’ was the best way she could describe him. She had always thought that there was just something very ‘criminal’ about the man who would arrive periodically at The Grange on his bicycle. She had also noticed how the man seemed to come and go at odd times, as if arriving and leaving when it pleased him. What, she had often wondered, sort of working arrangement is that? The man was evidently a gardener, but one with no set hours. It was, she felt, a very strange working arrangement. Most strange indeed.

  Linda Holyman sat in comfort in the deep armchair which stood against the wall of the sitting room of her bungalow. On the opposite side of the room, across a sea of dark green carpet, was the huge front window of her house. Very soon upon moving into her home she and her husband had come to learn that when she, or they, sat in the armchairs of the house which were opposite the window they could see very clearly out of it, but few people viewing from the outside could see them, being situated so deeply in the room as they were. It had become her practice, upon the sad but not unexpected loss of her husband, to sit in ‘her’ armchair each day during the daylight hours, often with a cup of tea on the low table beside the chair, listening to soothing Radio 3 or learned Radio 4, and to watch the world go by, such as what of the world was wont to go by in slee
py Millington. Usually Linda Holyman saw little of note or of interest but occasionally, very occasionally, an incident would occur which would hold her attention, and which she would remember, as was the case a few days earlier, on the previous Saturday of that week.

  It had been, she had noted, and now still well recalled, in the late forenoon of that day that a car had turned off the road which divided her bungalow from The Grange, and, unusually, she thought, had then halted at the very foot of the driveway rather than going all the way up to the front of the house. Intrigued, Linda Holyman had watched as three young women exited the car and then formed a particularly strange sight, so she felt. All three, she noticed, were dressed identically, in civilian clothing rather than in military wear, but so identical that it might, she fancied, be the uniform of a large commercial organization, in the way that air hostesses dress in the uniform of the airline for which they work. Not only did the three women wear identical clothing but what was also remarkable, she thought, was their identical handbags, each carried on the right shoulder, and also their hairstyle and hair colour, being long and blonde, were also identical.

  By then utterly spellbound, Linda Holyman watched as the three women walked slowly and calmly, very slowly and very calmly, she thought, up the driveway of The Grange, but they walked not as Linda Holyman had anticipated or expected, as a small group keeping station with each other, or in line abreast, but rather she saw that as they walked their paths interweaved, with one crossing in front of the other or others, or with one crossing behind the other or others, or when not in line abreast, with one at the rear moving forwards to occupy the place at the front of the group, or the woman at the front reducing her pace and re-joining the group at the rear. Linda Holyman watched as halfway up the drive the three women stopped to look at the expanse of the large lawn to their right-hand side and then resumed walking in their casual but constantly intertwining manner further up the drive. Once level with the shrubbery they turned to their left to look at it. The three women then began to walk towards the house. At the house two of the women stood at either side of the steps facing outwards, not, Linda Holyman thought, unlike two sentries. Linda Holyman watched as the third woman climbed the steps and knocked on the door using the brass knocker. She watched as the door opened and the woman who had knocked on the door entered the house immediately, too rapidly, she thought, to have been invited to enter. The door was then closed behind her, whereupon the other two women continued to stand motionless, sentinel-like, as if not being permitted to move, nor to speak to each other. Within a few moments the woman who had entered the house was noticed by Linda Holyman to re-emerge, closing the door behind her, and then descended the steps and stood between the other two women. There was then a short but noticeable pause before the three women walked away from the house, moving as one, as if responding to some visual or audible cue or command which only they could see or hear. The three women walked back down the driveway, and once again their paths interweaved until they drew level with the car which was clearly waiting for them at the foot of the driveway. They got into the car, one in the front passenger seat and the other two sliding, in a lady-like manner in Linda Holyman’s estimation, on to the rear seat. The car then carefully reversed on to the main road and was driven out of Millington in an easterly direction, opposite to the direction from which it had arrived. Linda Holyman had not seen the three women before, nor would she see them again.